Spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?

Wow, killed our 2nd black widow in a week. First one was when we tried to vanquish some of those little ants from coming in the house and eating the marshmallows (curse you marshmallow guns!). I went outside and sprayed some where the siding meets the concrete. A few moments later a little bitty black widow dropped down, stunned. Another shot of spray (yes, I'm too afraid to squish her) and she appeared dead.

Today we go to clean up the porch and we move a folding chair-- BOO! A big, fat, female black widow who immediately curls around her egg sac! Oh my, time for Le Spray Juste, aka "RAID Wasp Killer." We really hope that did the trick, because before we could grab a shoe and finish the job, the darn thing flipped over (with surprising speed and distance) and scampered below deck.

Last year my kids got to see two females in the sandbox. What's really crazy is that my entire life I've been deathly afraid of spiders, even the harmless little brown ones. And yet in the past two years I have seen four black widows "in the wild"-- which is four more than I've ever seen in the wild before.

This makes me extremely nervous about building our house in the woods!